Mr. J. Miers on the Genus Rhabdia. 431 
This is a shrub of much smaller dimensions and of low 
straggling growth, collected at a place called the “‘ Plumerillas,”’ 
in the Travesia not far from Mendoza: it is somewhat prostrate, 
with several tortuous spreading branches, from 9 inches to a 
foot long; the younger branches are cinereous, very rough, 
and more flexuous than in the preceding species; the leaves 
are less than half the size of those of the other species, more 
shortly cuneated, horizontally spreading ; its flowers are never 
axillary, always terminal upon short axillary branches }—1 inch 
long, furnished with from two to four small leaves; the axils 
are much closer, only 1 or 2 lines apart. The leaves ordina- 
rily are 3 lines (rarely 5 lines) long, 2 lines broad across the 
lateral teeth, } line broad immediately below them, and thence 
linear to the base. The pedicel of the terminal solitary flower 
is very short; the calyx (including the teeth 3-1 line long) is 
3 lines in length, the teeth being of a long triangular form, 
flat inside, without any intervening membranes; the tube of 
the corolla is 3-4 lines long, the lobes of the border 2 lines 
long, 1 line broad; the filaments, dilated in the lower moiety, 
are fixed in the middle of the tube, 3 lines long, and therefore 
but little exserted; the ovary is 1 line in diameter, supported 
on a narrow stipitate support ? line long; the lower portion of 
the style is 3 lines long, its branches 2 lines long; the ten 
appendices (nearly equal in size, setiform, 1 line long) form 
an annular fringe round the base of the corolla. The drupe is 
more globular than in the preceding species, and the persistent 
calyx, which half encloses it, is split on one side to the base. 
RHABDIA. 
This genus was founded by Von Martius, in 1826, upon a 
Brazilian plant which he described and figured in his Noy. 
Gen. 1. 136, tab. 195; he placed it in Hhretiacew, where also 
it has been arranged by De Candolle and other botanists. 
Fresenius, in his memoir published thirty-one years afterwards 
in the ‘Flora Brasiliensis,’ absolutely ignored the peculiar 
seminal structure, which had been so well described by Von 
Martius. His diagnosis of Rhabdia is very short and unac- 
countably incomplete; he merely regarded it as an aberrant 
genus between L/eliotropiee and Cordiacee. My own obser- 
vations fully confirm the accuracy of the peculiar struc- 
ture of the fruit and seed as it is minutely described in the 
work of Von Martius. The placentation of the ovary is like 
that of Amerina; that is to say, it is unilocular, with two op- 
posite parietal placentee, which project inwards towards the 
centre, where they do not meet, but are bifidly spread and 
